Category Archives: Winter

Another favorite Gingerbread story of ours is The Gingerbread Baby written by Jan Brett. This a great story to use during your Gingerbread Unit or for an author study. Jan Brett has some awesome winter books that would make for a great author study for this time of year.

Our favorite part of The Gingerbread Baby book unit is our tiered story organizer. This is twist on the traditional story map – using the same elements, but allowing more room for the students. The story organizer covers characters, setting, problem and solution. Each page tells students what to write about, and almost all the pages have the students illustrate parts of the story.

We also really love our gingerbread house glyph. Students will create a gingerbread house by answering questions about the story. We’ve included a blank gingerbread house and the candy pieces for the house.

Since this story takes place in a Swiss village, we have created a writing plan and writing paper for students to think about the differences that would occur if the story took place where you live.

We’ve also included a basic sequencing story map with beginning, middle, and end. You’ll also find a writing prompt/page where students write about how they would catch the Gingerbread Baby and a Venn diagram to compare The Gingerbread Baby to the original story. {This is the only single story that contains a Venn diagram – more charts, organizers, etc. that can be used with multiple stories will be in the combined unit.} There are also some additional math worksheets for students to work on counting and/or skip counting (just for fun!). And of course, you will find twenty vocabulary cards – as usual!

Students love this book and it is essential if you want to use a fun story we will be talking about later this week – Gingerbread Friends – where the Gingerbread Baby’s story continues!

This unit is available for purchase on its own, in our Jan Brett Winter Book Units, and will be available in the Gingerbread Unit as well.

Over the years, the classic story of the Gingerbread Man has been retold again and again. Over the next few days will be telling you a little bit about some of the unique or fun versions we have come across.

First up – The Sourdough Man

Obviously this story takes place in Alaska. Rather than the traditional gingerbread cookie, our main character is a loaf of sourdough bread. The Sourdough Man runs away from numerous animals (all native to Alaska) such as caribou and lemmings. Overall, we are introduced to nine animals! The ending to this story is the more similar to the original tale. An arctic fox tricks the Sourdough Man into being eaten in the middle of a river.

One interesting thing we noticed about this story was the author’s descriptive writing. In the beginning of the story, Cherie Stihler devotes an entire paragraph the the Sourdough Man’s appearance, however the character depicted is very plain. In our book unit, we’ve included a template for your students to decorate the Sourdough Man the way they hear the character described as before you show them the illustrations.

At the end of the story, the author mentions that the Grandmother was saving the story of the Sourdough Man for after dinner. We have included a writing paper that essentially has the students retell the story from the Grandmother’s perspective.

Our unit includes two graphic organizers. One is a story map (characters, setting, problem, + solution). The other refers to how the fox tricks the Sourdough Man in the format of First, Next, Then, Finally.

We’ve included a SHORT research piece on Alaska. The worksheet simply asks students to find the capital, motto, and what kind of animals live in Alaska. Then there is space for the students to draw the state flag. There is also an area for students to write three ways Alaska is different from where they live. (Answer Key included)

We have a quick page on similes. The top portion of the page explains two patterns that can be used to write similes and then the bottom of the page asks students to write similes about characters in the story.

Finally, we have a sequencing activity. First students will order 10 events from the story (provided), then they will create a graphic representation of the events (provided).

This is such a fun version of the Gingerbread Man and provides students with a peak into Alaska’s animals and wildlife. There is much more that could be done with this book if you had time, but our unit was created with the idea that it was part of a larger gingerbread man unit.

All of our gingerbread units will be available for purchase separately or as a bundle (with a price cut). You can find The Sourdough Man Book Unit in our TpT store.

Christmas is the best time of the year! The twinkling lights, cold weather, family, holiday spirit… the list goes on and on. Christmas music has been the soundtrack to our work for weeks now (to help get us in the mood of course). Starting tomorrow, we’ll be introducing you to a gingerbread story and the resources we’ve created to go along with them each day this week.

Keep your eye out for another giveaway sometime this month (hopefully)! We are close to reaching 200 followers and that definitely deserves some celebrating. Let us know what kind of giveaway you’d like to see in the comments (i.e. reading, math, winner’s choice, etc.).

We hope everyone snagged some great deals from TpT during the Cyber Monday + Bonus Tuesday Sale! It certainly has been excited reading about all the great finds and successful shopping the past few days.

Before we get on to the Gingerbread Men… we are humbled that we have been nominated for a Liebster Award, not once, not twice, but FIVE times!! How exciting to be part of such a wonderful blogging community. We will be looking for some great blogs to spread this kindness to over the next few days. In the mean time…

We are working on our Gingerbread Man Unit for TpT. We’ve already posted our Gingerbread Baby unit, but we are also working on:

Gingerbread Friends

The Library Gingerbread Man

The Jalapeno Man

The Gingerbread Man

Gingerbread Superhero!

The Sourdough Man

These books are so fun and we know your students will love this unit. Throughout the week, we will be posting about each book individually to help you decide which ones will fit with your students and curriculum. If there is one thing we’ve learned by reading all these gingerbread stories, it’s that every Gingerbread Manhas his own story!

Don’t forget to enter in our giveaway (ending tomorrow) for a chance to win our Jan Brett Winter Book Units!

We get a lot of questions asking for help with giveaways. We’ve put together a quick picture tutorial for those of you who are new to setting up a giveaway. Rafflecopter has been our giveaway generator of choice. If you use a different site, please let us know so we can check it out!

Step 2: Choose the free option or decide if you want to pay a monthly fee. {The upgraded features are new and limit your free options a little, but the free tool works just fine!}

Step 3: Sign up or log in

Step 4: View your dashboard, you can start a new giveaway, view giveaways starting soon, and giveaways that are completed – click on plan one now

Step 5: This is the screen you will see when starting a new giveaway. Fill in the title of the giveaway – no one will see this but you, so a nickname or description of prizes works well.

Step 6: Fill in your prize. You can add multiple prizes if needed, it’s best to put the title of what you are giving away. The add a picture feature is an upgrade, but you can always share a picture on your blog post.

Step 7: Choose your options on how entries can be earned. Again, not all these features are available with the free giveaway plan, but there are ways around that. Since you can create your own option, things like pinning to Pinterest can still be used – you’ll just have to specify the entries need to be verified by leaving the URL

Step 8: Pick your date range.

Step 9: Write your terms. Rafflecopter used to do this automatically, but it seems to be an upgraded feature now. Briefly put the basic terms of the giveaway (when it occurs, who can enter, how the prize will be delivered, etc.)

Step 10: Get the code! Then you can post it on your blog or FB page

Congrats if you’ve made it this far! We will write more about giveaways next Q&A Monday – more specifically how to stay organized when running a multiple donation giveaway.

Since we set up a giveaway to make this tutorial, you all have a chance to win our Jan Brett Winter Book Units.

If you don’t want to take your chances on winning this awesome unit, our store is having a 20% off sale right now, and if you use the TpT 10% promo code in combination, you will save a total of 28%! Just click on the picture below to hop on over to our store.